Exultant, Ashi Geberkidane approaches the finish line to his state championship run. Photo by Karen McCoy.
By the end of the season, maybe the biggest question in anyone's mind about 5A boys cross country was whether anyone could beat either Ashi or Cerake Geberkidane. The brothers were having their undisputed run of all things cross country-ish, even while splitting time with soccer, heading into the state meet.
For a while, the answer to that question appeared to a negative, but one final, and determined, push from Clayson Shumway put the Liberty junior between the brothers. Shumway, incidentally, seems ideally suited to this course, having won the Cheyenne Mountain Stampede at the end of August and now wedging himself between an apparently unbeatable pair of brothers at the state meet. Shumway had some nice runs in between, but arguably his greatest success this year came on this course.
Like everyone else, however, Shumway had no final answer to the speed and strength of Ashi Geberkidane. Geberkidane is a senior and, accordingly, has run his final cross country race under the CHSAA banner, but it's difficult to imagine a brighter burning flame in the time he was part of the show.
For those few who were holding out doubt about the quality of competition faced by the elder Geberkidane to this point in the season, this race provided the stamp of validation. Geberkidane has no peers in Colorado high school cross country for 2012.
Even with a 1-3 finish (1-2 in team scoring), however, Denver East was well out of contention for the team title.
As promised from a point very early in the season, the team title came down squarely between Fairview and Mountain Vista.
Mountain Vista's day got off to a bit of an unanticipated start as the bus driver who came to the pick up the Golden Eagles had a very different Bear Creek Park (one in the Denver area) in mind. Coach Jonathan Dalby had to double as a navigator in order to get the team to the meet site. Who knows, perhaps the added adventure was worth an extra gram of two of adrenaline per runner?
Happily, both teams brought full regular varsity rosters to the meet, ensuring that neither team would have the gnawing dissatisfaction of beating a short-handed version of the other team. That much had been in question for at least one of the teams heading into the state meet.
For Mountain Vista, it was a tried-and-true strategy of patience and running within themselves. Never in the course of the race did Mountain Vista have a representative in medal position. Connor Weaver was first to cross the finish line in 12th, but the #5 for Mountain Vista (Blake Graf) crossed a mere 17.4 seconds later. You don't need front runners when you can pack them in that densely.
At the regional race, you had the sense there may have been more there if they had needed it, but this time there was everything on the line and a very tight race. The 1 - 5 gap for Mountain Vista was good last weekend at 5A Region 5. It was great this time.
Fairview kept runners in medal position early in the race, but the Knights struggled to maintain those places later in the race. Cory Munsch, Fairview's top guy, finished one place behind Connor Weaver. And, if you were casting about in search of bad omens for Fairview's chances, the absence of a medaling runner would be among your first troubling indicators. Fairview needed to score well early to maximize their chances against a notoriously balanced Mountain Vista squad.
Yet, despite the fact that Fairview had a 1 - 5 gap nearly double of what Mountain Vista managed, the overall spacing in terms of team points came to only 13 points. The keys came at the #4 and #5 scoring positions where Mountain Vista edged Fairview 23 - 27, and then 30 - 40. Through the first three places, Fairview actually held a one-point advantage.
On this day, however, it was Mountain Vista claiming their first state title and erasing much of the disappointment of close-but-not-quite finishes the last two years.
Both teams will have some serious work of replacing bodies to do, as Fairivew graduates six of seven off of this year's team and MV graduates four of seven.
5A Boys State Highlights Video
